Well in terms of the hardware it runs on it's closed (which is one of it's greatest strengths) but in terms of the software it runs etc it is not.
Overall it's a closed system.
It is both a strength and a weakness.
It is a strength because the hardware works well with the software. But that is a weakness because there is less hardware available that you can use. Which also drives up costs because there is no hardware competition.
They sell the OS cheap, but they can only do that because they overcharge for everything else. In effect it's more expensive than a PC, even if the OS is cheaper on the Mac side.
I'll give you that as a downside for desktops, but for something like a Mac Mini or an iMac or a MacBook / Pro, there's no downside, the cost reflects the fact that it's a higher end system, it's the equivalent of expensive PC's.
That being said, I know a fuck load and I use a Mac.
why not OSX? Nothing else is wrong with it. It's just Linux written to run on specific hardware.
I don't really care about OS X, Windows, or Linux. They all do what I need to do, and I don't give a crap about this "customizing" thing that Linux users seem push. But I do care about a decent trackpad with awesome gestures such as four-finger swipe for Exposé, and that's why I have a MacBook Pro. It sucks that only Apple has that well implemented, because I want a 17" laptop but am limited to a $2500 MacBook Pro.
Hmm...
I stand by both of those statements, would you like to refute one?
http://www.apple.com/macosx/what-is-macosx/
http://www.diffen.com/difference/Linux_vs_Unix
Saying Mac OS is just Linux written for specific hardware is insulting... really.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Mac_OS
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Mac_OS_X
good call, I misspoke, I meant it was a Unix OS written for specific hardware.
sure you did, especially after you said you backed up your claim and asked him to refute it.
I'll give you that as a downside for desktops, but for something like a Mac Mini or an iMac or a MacBook / Pro, there's no downside, the cost reflects the fact that it's a higher end system, it's the equivalent of expensive PC's.
lol that gave me a good laugh. i have dealt with macs for quite a bit now, and to say they're equivalent to expensive pc's is just false, and that statement falls right into fanboyism. do you really think the pieces in that shiny mac tower are of the highest caliber?
That being said, I know a fuck load and I use a Mac.
I'm happy to concede that until today the difference between a Unix system and a Linux system were not completely apparent to me.
lol that gave me a good laugh. i have dealt with macs for quite a bit now, and to say they're equivalent to expensive pc's is just false, and that statement falls right into fanboyism. do you really think the pieces in that shiny mac tower are of the highest caliber?
LMAO.
(caps)
ORLY?
I do realize that I'm arguing with 16 year old kids here, but darwin ports repo has essentially anything that you can get from portage/APT
wrong
the Darwin kernel that Mac OS X and iOS is based on has been opensourced years ago by Apple, it is one of the very few certified UNIX kernels in existence today and really the only one in active development and "widespread" deployment.
Linux and BSD descendants (some of darwin is borrowed from BSD) are only unix-like, not unix certified.
http://www.opensource.apple.com/ here you can find lists of all opensource projects that are part of Mac OS X and iOS, quite a bit of them developed and then opensourced by Apple.
granted, some parts (albeit quite important parts) of Mac OS and iOS are proprietary but so are some parts of some linux distros.
"However, Macs are no more open source than Windows are"
Now that is just a big load of ..., many parts of the Mac OS X are open source
Well, that all depends on how you look at it. Yes, OSX is built on top of many open source components....but at the end of the day, as a complete package, it is proprietary software just as Windows is when talking about it as a whole. Can I download the source code for Cocoa or the Dock and modify it? Can I redistribute OSX freely? Darwin is open source, OSX is proprietary. --ZephyrXero 18:36, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
Exactly, Darwin is open source, and that's what actually runs every single component of Mac OS X and is responsible for making sure the computer actually boots up, so I think that should be factored in considering that's a pretty big part of computers... 173.17.187.196 20:35, 3 May 2009 (UTC)
Yes, Darwin is a major component of OSX, but it still does not make OSX, as a whole open source. This article is about OSX, not just the Darwin kernel. --ZephyrXero 21:35, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
No, it doesn't make the whole thing open source, but it does make it more open source than Windows, which is not based off of any open source at all. In fact they avoid it like the plague.JordyD 01:45, 5 July 2009 (UTC)
I think that the discussion of just "how much" open-source OS X / Windows Vista or the soon-to-be Windows 7 is has been reduced to an almost meaningless or contrived comparison. When I think of why Linux might be better than Windows or Mac operating systems with respect to it being open-source, I think of the open-source community that follows Linux and the widespread productivity it has brought as a specific result of being open-source. In this frame of thought, and with respect to the above discussion, the degree of legal power or ownership any entity claims and exercises over its code certainly does factor into how open-source it is, as it effects the ability of the code to be used by other groups and it prevents the ability for open-source development communities to emerge from that code. Thus, I would not think that, based on the information in this discussion, neither OS X or Windows Vista can be fairly characterized as "open-source," nor do I think the comparison between the two as displayed above is meaningful due to the degree of legal power both Microsoft and Apple holds over their codes, especially since even those open-source components are so tightly interconnected to propriety, closed-sourced components of an operating system. What is the meaning of releasing source code when the legal protections one exercises over it are so stringent that it is almost as if it is closed-source? The only beneficiary to that code can be Apple. YosefLevi 20:05, 26 July 2009 (UTC)
I don't know about towers, but I have yet to find a HP, Dell, Acer, etc notebook that has near the refinement of my macbook pro.
So much in fact that I bought my macbook pro not for OSX, but for it's design. I originally planned to put linux on it.
Dual Xeons? FB-DIMM ECC RAM? Yeah pretty high caliber.
Mac vs. PC arguments always end well and with a definitive correct answer.
When we are done here, we can come to a consensus regarding JFK and 9/11.
MotionMan
you're just listing parts any pc is capable of. either you misunderstood or you missed the point of my question so i'll rephrase it a bit. do you really think the quality of the parts inside that mac are any better built than a dell or hp? do you think they are built better? i can tell you it's no. they like being on the cutting edge on some things, but their parts quality to price point sucks. when you buy a mac, what are the reasons for buying it? you like the OS? you like the style? i doubt the answer is because it has better quality parts, but if it is.. then well...
What happened to 6?1) I need a good CLI
2) I want software than runs near perfectly on the hardware it was written for
3) I want to choose my OS, if I want OSX that's fine, If I also want Windows, that's fine too. If I want a Linux distro, that's fine too. I can do all of those as well as they can be done, on a MacBook.
4) Good customer service, if and when I need it.
5) Good interconnectivity between my devices, my iPhone, my iPad, my Mac's.
7) It just works.
What happened to 6?
5 is kind of the key point though. If you are already devoted to apple peripherals it makes sense to purchase a Mac. But inter-connectivity is a broad term. I think you mean it as some sort of ease of sharing... which might have been true a few years ago. Now however, Apple has finally realized they need to play nice with the big boys and we can do all sorts of sharing with the apple devices on our campus that we couldn't 3 years ago.
[edit] Oh and any computer works as well as you task it to. I am sure if you fiddle with the OS enough you can crash your Mac. I am equally sure that you can run an 8088 in a great CLI, write exactly the software you want it to run, run whatever OS you want (hell some boot straight to BASIC if you lack a system disk), IBM customer service, your choice between RS-232 and IEEE 1284, and I still have a working IBM XT around.